


Undertow

by bending_sickle



Category: Firefly
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-06
Updated: 2014-08-06
Packaged: 2018-02-12 01:15:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2090202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bending_sickle/pseuds/bending_sickle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Simon and River recall her sessions at the academy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Undertow

**Author's Note:**

> 
>     dear girl
>     How i was crazy how i cried when i heard
>                                             over time
>     and tide and death
>     leaping 
>     Sweetly
>            your voice
> 
> \- E.E. Cummings, '"your little voice"

He was in the infirmary, of course. River stopped at the door, her bare feet pressed up against the edge, and watched her brother. He was looking at her brain again, standing with his back to her, facing the screen. His arms hung loosely by his side.  
  
Simon’s thoughts were swimming upstream.  
  
He was thinking about Little Mouse, the girl of fifteen who’d delighted in the frustration of Advanced Physics and teased him about Belinda.  
  
He was thinking about the other mouse, the one she’d become; hiding, hidden, making no sound except through codes embedded in ink. He was thinking about the mattress she’d gutted, the man she’d written into.  
  
 _I can see you._  
  
Simon whirled around at her voice, his thoughts floundering, and for one moment River would have given anything, gone anywhere, to never see that look on his face again.  
  
She hadn’t meant to speak; wasn’t sure she had.  
  
The look slipped from his face as Simon found a foothold. “ _Mèimei_.” He looked at her for a moment then turned back to the screen.  
  
 _People tell you things all the time, without talking. The way they move, the way they aren't talking._  
  
His hands were shaking.  
  
River crossed the threshold with only a slight hesitation, trying to ignore the same medical smell that could be found in every infirmary, hospital and Advanced Program facility. How unjust of the ‘verse it was that she could never share in Simon’s haven.  
  
She walked across the infirmary, arms held out as she tried to keep her head above Simon’s thoughts. She reached the island and dug her fingers, already cold, into the sheets.  
  
He was thinking about the sessions.  
  
The two of them, the gifted and the gift, were cursed, she knew. Their parents, their teachers and their friends had all envied them. So smart, they’d said, so quick and bright.  
  
 _You lost the first one._  
  
Of course they were smart – top three percent for the gifted, just “top” for the gift – but the problem with shining so bright was that you could see.  
  
That was the main gift that River and her brother shared: being able to see things others couldn’t. They could see connections, causes and results. They could see the hidden laws and theories governing everything. They could see the apple before it fell.  
  
She wished her brother had never seen it hit the ground.  
  
 _Can’t…see…anyone._  
  
River shook her head and focused on Simon. His head was bowed; he’d stopped looking into her broken mind. He was still thinking about her – it seemed to River he was always thinking about her now. Watching him now, she skimmed the surface of his current.  
  
 _My brother. Is a doctor._  
  
She smiled; she’d always been so proud of him.  
  
 _He thinks he can find me—_  
  
With a cry, River slipped and sank.  
  
 _but...I am deep down—_  
  
Water and memories flowed over her. She tightened her fingers reflexively, trying to hold onto the island, willing her legs to bear her up as her lungs collapsed.  
  
Simon’s thoughts were being dragged by the current into the mouth of the river, the heart of the matter.  
  
 _Please… It hurts._  
  
“ _Mèimei_ , what is it?”  
  
Between the swirling time, tide and death, River found a foothold. She thought of sisters and swans in churning waters as her brother lifted her from his memories onto the infirmary floor. She tried to wipe her face dry but he held her tight.  
  
Reality squeezed her shoulders. “Look at me, _mèimei_.” Her brother’s face swam into focus. “What’s wrong? What hurts?”  
  
She shook her head, shivering, and tried to stand, but Kaylee must have knocked the gravity askew.  
  
“Hold on,” whispered Simon as he wrapped his arms about her.  
  
“I tried,” answered River as she was lifted onto the infirmary bed.  
  
Simon leaned in close to her and drew her hair away from her face. “What is it?” he repeated.  
  
“I’m not progressing.”  
  


***

Simon said nothing. It was true: the latest – and probably last, if he didn’t get a chance to restock at the next Skyplex – batch of medicine hadn’t done much to improve her mental state.

But that’s not what she’d meant.

She’d taken it so well, hearing her old nickname again, that Simon hadn’t thought to check whether it had actually registered. Besides, her memories of that name were varied, memories of touchboards, scholarly pride and envious classmates.

He, on the other hand, had only one memory. He couldn’t remember whether River had told him about the nickname – surely she must have. But somehow all he could remember was her smiling face when she confessed her nickname, with subtle pride, to a man whose face Simon would never see.

Simon dragged himself away from those thoughts, pressing his hand to his sister’s forehead. Her skin was clammy and she still shivered in his arms, but her cheeks were flushed. His thoughts considered nausea as the cause, but dismissed it quickly.

It was the sessions that had brought this on.

His sister’s voice – the ghost she had become in that black and white room - echoed round and round inside his head as her whispered plea had earlier in the infirmary. He shut his eyes against the memories, but images of the stolen film dragged themselves out from the well he tried to keep them in. His sister’s voice – soft, crumbling as it begged – repeated incessantly in his head.

_Please…it hurts, please, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts, please._

She’d tried so hard to get out of that place, the program, the room. Now that he’d finally – after too long, much too long – gotten her out, she kept slipping back inside, taking it with her through the vacuum of space and time.

“Semni thought so.”

“Who?”

“Semni.” River looked down at her hands. “Julian Semni Mathias.”

Simon nodded curtly in recognition, his jaw clenching. “We’ve met,” he said. He tried to keep his arms from tightening around his sister as memories of the proud man flooded him. “Not the best of doctors.”

“ _Primum non nocere_.”

Simon rested his chin on River’s shoulder and held her tight, rubbing his thumb along her spine in slow sweeps. It was an old childhood gesture of his, one he still used whenever River got upset. He felt her shaking stop as she leaned into him.

 _First, do no harm_. He closed his eyes. _It hurts_. He held his breath. _Please_. He held his sister.

***

After a while they grew into adults again and Simon let her go. She stifled a shiver at the cold of his absence, and he offered a blanket as replacement of his arms.

“He violated his oath,” she said, pulling the blanket tightly around her shoulders. “They all did. They all lied.”

Simon leaned against the counter, his thoughts sinking into cold blue depths though his hands were steady against his legs.

“They came into my house and seduced the free people they found there, the whole household, and advised death.”

River tucked her legs beneath her, up out of the current. She shuddered under the blanket, feeling her brother’s gaze heavy on her shoulders. She kept her eyes firmly on her shore, unable to look across to Simon’s regret.

“They smiled.” River gave a short, harsh laugh like breaking glass. “They smiled as they chipped at the stone, smiled when they put the blade in the hand.” She jabbed at the air with one hand with each smile, twisting painfully. “Smiled when they pulled the strings, when they seared the words inside.” She looked up at the statue of her brother and parted her lips in a mockery of a smile. “ _Xiào lǐ cáng dāo._ ”

_You cut too deep; he died on the table._

With a cry, River leapt from the island, hands cradling her head protectively. Her legs buckled and she went down to the floor, floundering, treading water. She tried to breathe, tried to keep her head above the waves, tried to call out but her throat felt raw.

_We're doing such good work._

They were holding her down. Sharp smiles were grasping at her arms, her legs, her hair, and pulling her down, biting into her. The weight of the words they’d whispered and sewn into her dragged her deeper into the tangle of lying smiles.

One smile latched onto her arm and she saw, seconds before it bit into her flesh, that its teeth were surgical blades. Her arm went numb. She tried to scream, writhing away from the lie deep in her arm, tried to turn her head from the spreading cold.

_It's in the mattress, and it's crawling inside me!_

Her head broke past the waves. Simon pulled her to shore, where she lay gasping. Her brother was saying something but she couldn’t make it out yet, the crash of the waves was too loud. He was saying the same thing over and over, in time with the tide.

River shook her head, trying to clear her vision. She was so tired. Simon pulled the blanket over her again and rubbed her arm where the smile had bitten her. He held something in his hand but she couldn’t make it out.

Slowly, over her brother’s murmured concern, River heard her own voice. She was surprised to find herself screaming.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, _mèimei_. I tried, I got to you as fast as I could, _mèimei_ , I really did. Oh, _Fózŭ_ , I’m so sorry.”

Simon’s whispering continued until it was the only sound in the room.

Hazily, from the edge of sleep, River began to make out her brother’s words. Her eyes were closed – everything seemed so bright now – and her arms and legs felt heavy. She frowned at his words. Leaning back from him so she could look at him, she tried to comfort him with reason.

“Better late than never.” She felt Simon stiffen. She bit her lip, hard, but the word was out.

“Late.”

River shook her head. “Not too late.” She smiled at him, trying so hard to smile so that it would actually be a smile. She closed her eyes and leaned into him, wrapping her arms about his waist as she so often as a little girl, when he’d been so much taller than her. “It’s never too late to right a wrong.” Simon didn’t say anything, but hugged her back.

“You’re my brother, _ài chēng_ , the doctor.” She looked up at him and smiled with pride. “The genius.”

_I could never do what he does._

**Author's Note:**

> **Translations:**
> 
> _mèimei_ \- little sister
> 
>  _Primum non nocere_ – "It is a common misconception that the phrase primum non nocere, 'first, do no harm' is included in the Hippocratic Oath. It is not, but seems to have been derived through Galen from Hippocrates’s Epidemics in which he wrote, “Declare the past, diagnose the present, foretell the future; practice these acts. As to diseases, make a habit of two things—to help, or at least to do no harm.” (Quoted from Everwild's "Time and the River".)
> 
>  _Xiào lǐ cáng dāo_ \- A dagger can be concealed in a smile. (Chinese proverb)
> 
>  _ài chēng_ \- diminutive, pet name, term of endearment (where, insofar as I've managed to find out, _ài_ means _love, be fond of, like_ , and _chēng_ means prop up, support, brace)


End file.
